Colorado Mountain College
OP-17: Support for Sustainable Transportation

The college's Aspen and Carbondale campuses are both within one block of stations on the WeCycle network, which provides free use of bicycles to registered users for up to 30 minutes (and paid rentals thereafter).

We put our Breckenridge and Dillon campuses onto a car-sharing network called Colorado CarShare, which covers an area including the Front Range (i.e. Denver and suburbs from Boulder to Colorado Springs) and a few locations in the eastern area of Colorado's Rocky Mountains (where Breckenridge and Dillon are located). This program operates by allowing registered users to book a vehicle for flexible periods of time, from 15 minutes up to several days. We provide free and secure parking for the vehicles, which are available to anyone in the public, and thus a convenient way for CMC students, staff and faculty to become part of the network via those CMC sites. The Colorado CarShare network is centered on the Front Range and does not overlap with the CMC district beyond those two locations, but if it expands into other areas served by CMC locations, we too will expand the number of locations on the network. 

In order to contribute to the regional EV charging infrastructure of our rural Central Rocky Mountain area, in 2014 we leveraged our multi-campus structure (spread across an area bigger than Maryland) by installing twelve Level 2 EV charging stations at six different CMC locations on Colorado's Western Slope (supported by a grant from the Colorado Energy Office) and by providing free EV charging to the public (via our discretion to share this publicly-owned utility with the public). In order to mitigate the public's "range anxiety" as an inhibitor to their adoption of EV transport, we celebrated the opening of these stations by partnering with Rocky Mountain Institute (RMI) and Clean Energy Economy for the Region (CLEER) to organize the region's first "EV Road Rally" to show off the number of charging stations accessible along the loop from Glenwood Springs to Vail to Leadville to Aspen and ending at our CMC location in Carbondale. Ever since then, thousands of users have plugged in to these stations for tens of thousands of kWhs of free electricity.

This year (2024) we have renewed our commitment to incentivizing sustainable transport by adding nine new EV chargers across the CMC district. These new chargers cost money, and while we provide the public with electricity for $0.20/kWh, we offer CMC students and employees a reduced rate of $0.10/kWh.

The parking spots for these chargers were placed adjacent to the entrances of our buildings and reserved for EVs and HEVs to give preferential parking for those who have adopted this sustainable transport option, and signage reinforces that these spaces are reserved for EVs.

There are 17 dual-port EV charging stations across CMC campuses (for a total of 34 Level 2 plugs) that are marked on EV charging app maps and available for CMC students, staff and faculty, and members of the general public.

The college offers some on-campus apartment housing for employees via our new affordable housing initiative, including Spring Valley, Edwards, Breckenridge, Leadville and Steamboat Springs. Each year, students and employees enter a lottery that is weighted by a number of criteria and gives them the chance to sign on to a subsidized lease for this housing (which is separate from our Residential Life facilities available to traditional students).

At our Spring Valley campus, which is 3 miles away from the nearest stop on our public transit system, called RFTA, we offer free shuttle rides to campus (from that nearest RFTA stop) for CMC staff and students, via our RideCMC service.

CMC also has seven homes available for transitional employee housing that are within walking distance of the Glenwood Springs campus and is served by RFTA and the City of Glenwood Springs public transit lines.